Book Review: "Empire" by Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card's latest novel, Empire, is thoroughly different from his usual sci-fi/fantasy novels. Empire was filed under science fiction in the library, but it's actually set in a fairly near future, in an America breaking out into actual civil war between extremists on the Left and Right. Well, actually, the war is mostly carried out by the extreme Left.

Card's heroes are firmly in the Republican/military camp, but are cast by the author as moderates who just want to preserve the Constitution and country.

Although Card claims in his Afterword that extremists on both Right and Left are a problem, in the book he casts left-wing extremists as the instigators of the civil war. There are no right-wing fanatics. The only one who shows up is a fake, being used to provide an excuse for a left-wing rebellion.

I was disturbed by this imbalance throughout the book, and didn't feel it was a fair portrayal of conflict between Right and Left. Usually, Card seems moderate in his books. I've often seen things in his books that I wouldn't expect from a Mormon. He claims in the Afterword to be moderate, as well, and decries the tendency of both Right and Left to ostracize those who don't hold to the party line on every issue. In this book, however, I see a definite rightward slant.

I was interested in reading this book because of the political issues involved. We do have a serious polarization between Left and Right in our country, and I was interested in Card's treatment of this. However, Card really just skims the surface of the issues between Left and Right, and doesn't acknowledge some real problems that I see in our country, like the erosion of constitutional rights and the current administration's goal of hegemony in the Middle East.

The story moves at a fairly good pace, but seems shallow, even for a thriller. This may be due to the story actually being based on a yet-to-be-released video game. Empire is part of "an entertainment franchise," writes Card, "about a near-future American civil war." A company called Chair Entertainment has developed the video game based on this premise; Card provided a storyline. Chair also came up with mechanical walkers (think The Empire Strikes Back), hovercycles, and a few other technical items that are included in the story.

Empire just isn't up to Card's usual standard. I kept waiting for something more, throughout the whole book, but it just wasn't there.